Love hockey, hate soccer

This is going nowhere fast

What the Puck?
Autumn McDowell
Sports Editor

In my world, there are only two seasons: Summer and hockey.

Unfortunately, both of those seasons have been simultaneously ripped out of my dead, lifeless fingers and I have been left sitting in a pool of my own filth, better known to the rest of the world as “soccer season.”

However, because I would rather watch paint dry than soccer, and because I have developed somewhat of a following for my What the Puck? column – that’s a complete lie, no one reads this – I have been forced to come up with some hockey related current event to write a hilarious and sarcastic rant about every week.

With no real hockey to speak of, writing these rants has become increasingly impossible, and this week was no different.

If the NHL could get their act together and put together some high quality hockey before the end of the world, then I would at least have a big game, fight, or hit to talk about; but no.

Instead, I am forced to rack my brain weekly about what obscure hockey thing I can discuss and also make entertaining – it’s a rather daunting task.

My immediate thought for this week’s column was to go on a tangent about how few hockey games are played in Regina when you need them.

On Friday, Nov. 9 my friend and I went searching for a decent hockey game to watch in the city while tipping a few tall ones back and found that less than nothing was available.

There was no Cougars, Pats, Junior B, Junior C or Senior games to speak of – can you believe that? I mean, I was actually willing to sit through a Junior C game.

But, due to this unfortunate set of circumstances the closest decent hockey game – I use the term “decent” loosely – was a Junior B tilt in White City, because of the apparently “deadly snowfall” and over protective parents, we were forced to sit through two Adult Safe Hockey games – kill me now.

I swear to God, I am better than half of those players and I can’t even stop.

After realizing that it is probably extremely rare to have so few hockey games happening in Regina on a Friday night, and that I just had terrible luck, I was then going to try and debate why Donald Fehr is to blame for the NHL lockout and how the negotiations have come to a halt once again and how the “significant progress” that was being made was a bunch of bullshit to keep idiot fans like me interested.

But, I have built up such a strong hate for Gary Bettman, that saying any part of the lockout wasn’t entirely his fault made me feel hollow inside.

My next thought was to write about why I love the Pittsburgh Penguins. This was spurred by a Facebook debate I engaged in over who was better, Pittsburgh or the Calgary Flames. Naturally, I won the debate, because the Flames, really?

However, everyone already knows how much better Pittsburgh is than everyone else, so this would be a pointless column.

All of these possible column ideas seemed great in my head, but were actually quite terrible once I got them on paper. Even after all of my questions that have yet to be answered about hockey and the lockout specifically, only one thing can be certain: I will never be a soccer fan.

Photo courtesy Bill Guerin